(AP) HAVANA (AP) – Fidel Castro says al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is a bought-and-paid-for CIA agent who always popped up when former President George W. Bush needed to scare the world, arguing that documents recently posted on the Internet prove it.

“Any time Bush would stir up fear and make a big speech, bin Laden would appear threatening people with a story about what he was going to do,” Castro told state media during a meeting with a Lithuanian-born writer known for advancing conspiracy theories about world domination. “Bush never lacked for bin Laden’s support. He was a subordinate.”

Castro said documents posted on WikiLeaks.org – a website that recently released thousands of pages of classified documents from the Afghan war – “effectively proved he was a CIA agent.” He did not elaborate.

The comments, published in the Communist Party daily Granma on Friday, were the latest in a series of provocative statements by the 84-year-old revolutionary, who has emerged from seclusion to warn that the planet is on the brink of nuclear war.

Castro even predicted the global conflict would mean cancellation of the final rounds of the World Cup last month in South Africa. He later apologized for jumping the gun. Last week, he began highlighting the work of Daniel Estulin, who wrote a trilogy of books highlighting the Bilderberg Club, whose prominent members meet once a year behind closed doors.

The secretive nature of the meetings and prominence of some members – including former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, senior U.S. and European officials, and major international business and media executives – have led some to speculate that it operates as a kind of global government, controlling not only international politics and economics, but even culture.

During the meeting, Estulin told Castro that the real voice of bin Laden was last heard in late 2001, not long after the Sept. 11 attacks. He said the person heard making warnings about terror attacks after that was a “bad actor.”

Castro stepped down due to ill health in 2006 – first temporarily, then permanently – and handed power over to his younger brother Raul. He has remained head of the Cuban Communist party but stayed out of view for four years after falling sick before returning to the spotlight in July.

Castro did take exception with one of Estulin’s major theses: that the human race must move to another habitable planet or face extinction.

Castro said it would be better to fix things on Earth then abandon the planet altogether.

“Humanity ought to take care of itself if it wants to live thousands more years,” Castro told the writer.

Glenn Beck Rally Attendance: 87000 Restoring Honor on 8-28 Rally – Tens of thousands of activists from the American right went to Washington on Saturday for a demonstration to “restore the honor” of the country, on the scene of the famous speech “I Have A Dream” by Martin Luther King 47 years later.

The rally was linked to the Tea Party, an ultraconservative movement with populist overtones which was organized in opposition to the Obama administration.

The choice of date has raised controversy in the black community. Indeed, the main organizer of the rally, Glenn Beck, has shocked more than once, accusing Barack Obama of being racist against whites for example. In addition, the popular radio and Fox News host has often denounced the churches that advocate social justice, a central part of Martin Luther King’s message.

Many speakers, including the niece of the famous pastor, however, have invoked the memory of the civil rights leader of the 60s. The former Republican candidate for Vice-President Sarah Palin even said that she was feeling “the spirit of Martin Luther King.”

The ceremony was a tribute to American troops on mission abroad, and soaring policy messages was more rare than expected. The organizers also requested that no banners be displayed.

The 8/28 Glenn Beck Rally attracted 87000 people according to early estimates.

Another event, organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton, a black activist, was also scheduled in the afternoon in Washington to mark the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s speech.

Since it speaks to so many of the ideals of the modern “progressive”, I wanted to share it on this blog:

“Joe gets up in the morning and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his coffee. The water is clean because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow he takes his daily medication with is safe because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure it’s safety.

All but $10 of his medications are a are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance – so Joe gets it too.

On the shampoo label the ingredients are all properly labeled because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body.

Outside Joe breathes deeply of clean air because some wacko environmentalist fought against industrial pollution.

He walks the government provided sidewalk to the subway for his government subsidized ride to work.

Joe’s job provides him with excellent pay, medical benefits, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards.

If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed workman’s comp kicks in because some stupid liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of an injury or temporary situation.

At noon Joe goes to the bank to pay bills where his deposit is insured by the FDIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers.

He visits his father who survives on social security supplied because some liberals worked for it.

On August 26, Timereported that Special Operations Warrior Foundation, the charity to which the proceeds from the rally will go, had “required speakers at the event, who will include Sarah Palin, to sign an agreement promising not to talk politics.”

Nonetheless, during her speech, Palin said: “I must assume that you too, knowing that, no, we must not fundamentally transform America as some would want, we must restore America and restore her honor.”

Palin’s audience of Beck fans were well aware that she was referencing comments Obama made during his presidential campaign about “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” Over the past year and a half, Beck hasrepeatedlyused Obama’s remark to featmonger about Obama’s purportedly radical goals, going so far as to claim that Obama is “fundamentally transforming” the country to make it “look more like ACORN.”

There’s no question at all what Sarah Palin meant by her comment. In the past, she has explicitly used it to attack Obama. On the August 4 edition of Fox News’ Hannity, asked by Obama is pursuing certain policies, Palin said, “It’s ideology and it’s a commitment to what he had set out to do as a candidate. Barack Obama. And that was to fundamentally transform country.” She later added that “People are sending a message to President Obama and Congress that we do not support that fundamental transformation of America, that they are hell bent on kind of cramming it down our throats.”

Like this:

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: “For Whites Only.” We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”¹

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest — quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”2

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day — this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Glenn Beck is getting it from all sides as the countdown to his “Restoring Honor” rally is now at 19 hours and 59 minutes (it says so on his website). This morning, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski had some fun at Beck’s expense ahead of tomorrow’s Lincoln Memorial event:

[Today], Fox News host and self-professed “rodeo clown” Glenn Beck will hold his “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington, D.C. Beck initially insisted that the rally has no political significance — despite it being located at the Lincoln Memorial and taking place on the 47th anniversary of the “I Have A Dream” speech. He has increasingly claimed to be taking up the mantle of the civil rights movement. Earlier in the week, Beck boasted that the rally will “reclaim the civil rights movement” and called the current civil rights community an “abomination.”

While Beck is practically fashioning himself after revered civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and trying to take up the mantle of the civil rights movement, he is ultimately unfit to command such a legacy. The Fox News host’s views and actions are diametrically opposed to everything the late social justice leader fought for:

KING believed that it was America’s collective responsibility to provide economic justice for all. In 1961, the civil rights leader addressed the AFL-CIO on his vision of the American Dream. King said that his vision of America’s promise was a country where “equality of opportunity, of privilege and property [are] widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few.” King helped launch a Poor People’s Campaign based around demanding that “President Lyndon Johnson and Congress help the poor get jobs, health care and decent homes.” The civil rights legend explained that poverty was a problem that couldn’t be solved without a “the nation spending billions of dollars — and undergoing a radical redistribution of economic power.” He spent the last days of his life campaigning on behalf of a living wage for striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee.

BECK, on the other hand, has repeatedly insulted any government attempt to help the poor. The host has offensively claimed that “Big government never lifts anybody out of poverty. It creates slaves, people who are dependent on the scraps from the government, the handouts.” The pundit has declared that President Obama “really is a Marxist” because he “believes in the redistribution of wealth.” He argued in his book An Inconvenient Book that the reason the poor are poor and can’t be helped by the government is simply because they are “lazy.” Discussing the topic of rebuilding Katrina-ravaged New Orleans, Beck said we “shouldn’t spend a single dime” and that the residents should just “move out.” Discussing the topic of jobless Americans unable to find work receiving unemployment benefits, Beck said he would be “ashamed” to call some of them Americans.

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“J.D. Hayworth is deader than Elvis.”— Brian Rogers, a spokesman for Sen. John McCain, in the lead-up to Tuesday’s GOP primary in Arizona.

“Eric Massa’s back rubs — too rough.” —Comedian Bill Maher, listing one of the things he does not like about Washington in an interview with Capitol File Magazine.

“I mean, he really is smoking the drapes if he thinks the policies that they adopted, that they championed, that drove us into the ditch are the ones that we should return to.” —Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, responding to remarks made by Rep. John Boehner on the economy.

“I made the mistake of turning on this network in prime time last night, and my head almost blew off …” — MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, lamenting life as one of the network’s only conservatives.

“…like a milk cow with 310 million tits…” —Sen. Alan Simpson, providing his opinion of Social Security in an e-mail to the executive director of the National Older Women’s League.

“I have no interest in changing my hair color.” —CNN’s Anderson Cooper, responding to a group’s offer to pay him to dye his hair.